SimEarth: The Living Planet

SimEarth is a life simulation video game, the second designed by Will Wright, in which the player controls the development of a planet. The game was published in 1990 by Maxis. Versions were made for the Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, IBM PC, SNES, Sega Mega-CD and TurboGrafx-16. It was also subsequently re-released on the Wii Virtual Console. In 1996 several of Maxis' simulation games were re-released under the Maxis Collector Series with greater compatibility with Windows 95 and differing box art, including the addition of Classics beneath the title. SimEarth was re-released in 1997 under the Classics label.

In SimEarth, the player can vary a planet's atmosphere, temperature, landmasses, etc., then place various forms of life on the planet and watch them evolve. In the “Random Planet” game setting, the game is a software toy, without any required goals. The big (and difficult) challenge is to evolve sentient life and an advanced civilization. The development stages of the planet can be restored and repeated, until the planet "dies" ten billion years after its creation, the estimated time when the Sun will become a red giant and kill off all of the planet's life.

-- Wikipedia